A Spoonful of Laughter

Let me tell you about the recent adorableness of Sosi and how she makes me laugh everyday. Like how she barks every time she sees a dog (or any animal that she perceives to be a dog) or how she lunges toward anything sparkly and frantically signs “please” while saying “oooooooooooh.” She is now crawling all over the house after Layla, the cat, and the baby gates are officially up! Sometimes they play like siblings, sometimes they fight like felines… Oh, my feisty girl.

Noemi is gung-ho for sing-alongs, such as The Itsy Bitsy Spider—the toys she gravitates toward are the annoying ones that play garish music. She also wants to be eating anything that we eat, so we are letting her feast on much of our food. Her favorites right now are chick peas, rotisserie chicken, kidney beans and provolone cheese. Throw in some mandarin oranges and Goldfish crackers and this girl is as happy as a clam. She especially likes when I blow on her food first to cool it down—even if it doesn’t need a cooling. Noemi has the tendency to earnestly pack like a chipmunk, so we gotta watch her. She is highly motivated by her little snacks—watch and see. This was the first time I ever found her having pulled herself up to stand...

But some days I feel crazy. Like today. The last week has been a bit rough—back to some of our old antics. We are on a slippery slope with nap time, something Noemi never has jived with (though her nighttime sleep, mind you, is still going very well—whew). We are back to bucking every time I try to hold/rock her before a nap, which is certainly not to the degree it was weeks ago, but never the less its return is discouraging. I feel like a failure when I can’t soothe, comfort or calm my child. I’ve concluded that this girl just really has no idea how to put herself to sleep. It’s been difficult to separate variables. What is her simply becoming a toddler and learning to exert her independence, what is (what appears to be emerging as) her spirited temperament and what could be adjustment/attachment related? This is precisely what is so hard. Depending on the “cause” of her actions, I would react to them differently. Since I don’t know, I am just doing the best I can. Hence the crazies. Hence me not writing as much as I would have liked on this blog—my emotional energy is spent by the time she falls asleep at night and all I can do is think about if I have clean underwear for tomorrow and whether or not I'd rather go into the back of the underwear drawer and fetch the emergency pair or get off my rear end and do some wash.

I think what has made me feel like I am living in a day dream is that Noemi is not like this around other people. It makes sense that she challenges the person that she is most closely connecting with—can I trust her—is she safe? With others, she just goes with the flow. But when she has a day filled with tears and thrashing and then is pleasantly adorable with family that evening, I want to pluck my eyeballs out with a spoon. It’s like I’ve made it all up in my head. So my prayer has been to not have my mood be dependent on her mood, not to doubt myself and to rely on the knowledge that these early days are building blocks for a wonderful relationship with my vibrant, funny daughter—and I am doing a slam-dunk job. I know that to be true because we have lots of laughter despite our challenges—and laughter always helps the medicine go down.